Reflections on John 4.
Have you ever walked into a group and felt that everyone else knows something you don’t? Everyone seems to be on the WhatsApp group, everyone seems to be friends, and you feel like an outsider.
John 4 introduces us to someone who knew what it was like to be an outsider. She was a Samaritan, a woman, probably uneducated, probably poor, and morally compromised. She was the ultimate outsider.
This is very different from the man we met in John 3: Nicodemus. He was a Jewish man, educated, religious, probably wealthy, and a leader. He was the ultimate insider.
John deliberately puts these two stories together to make a point: Jesus came to save both the insiders and the outsiders.
Some people think they are too good for Jesus. Others think they are too bad for Jesus. John 3 and 4 tell us that neither is true.
We all need Jesus.
Jesus seeks the spiritually clueless
John tells us that Jesus “had to pass through Samaria.” Geographically, he didn’t have to. But Jesus had a mission. He deliberately went into a place where respectable Jewish people would rather not go.
At Jacob’s well, Jesus engages this Samaritan woman and asks her for a drink. He deliberately crosses an ethnic and religious barrier.
Perhaps you feel spiritually clueless. Maybe everyone else seems to understand Christianity, while you feel like an outsider.
Jesus came for people like you.
Jesus seeks the socially forgotten
The woman was not only a Samaritan; she was a woman in a culture where women were treated as less important. Even Jesus’ disciples were surprised to find him talking with her.
But Jesus did not treat her as invisible, but thoughtfully engaged with her.
Perhaps you feel forgotten, ignored or excluded. Perhaps you’ve even experienced discrimination within the church.
Jesus sees the socially forgotten.
Jesus seeks the morally broken
The conversation gets personal when Jesus tells the woman to call her husband. She admits she has no husband, and Jesus reveals that she has had five husbands and is currently living with someone who is not her husband.
Now we understand why she was drawing water at noon, in the hottest part of the day. She was socially ostracised because of her past.
Jesus knew everything about her—and still engaged with her.
But Jesus did not minimise her sin. He confronted it because he had come not to condemn her, but to save her.
He offers her something better: living water.
We all look for satisfaction somewhere. The world offers plenty of polluted substitutes—sex, money, success, relationships, pleasure and countless distractions. But they never satisfy the soul.
Jesus says that the water he gives becomes “a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”
The gospel is not about climbing our way up to God by being good enough. It is about Jesus coming down to save sinners.
As John the Baptist said:
“Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!” (John 1:29)
You cannot be too bad for Jesus. He is a great Saviour.
Jesus says the harvest is urgent
After the woman meets Jesus, she goes back to town and tells everyone about him. People begin coming to Jesus.
Meanwhile, the disciples are mainly concerned about lunch!
Jesus tells them:
“Lift up your eyes, and see that the fields are white for harvest.” (John 4:35)
The harvest is ready. Now is the time.
We can always find reasons to delay following Jesus or telling others about him: I’ll do it after my studies. When I earn more money. When life settles down. When I’m less busy.
But Jesus reminds us that the gospel is urgent.
The Saviour has come. People are dying. Hell is real.
Jesus sends us into the harvest
The Samaritan woman didn’t have her life together. She didn’t have a theological degree. She hadn’t been a Christian for years.
But she had met Jesus. So she went and told others where to find him.
And many believed—because they came to Jesus themselves and discovered that he really is “the Saviour of the world.”
That’s the Christian mission.
Whatever your field—medicine, engineering, finance, teaching, plumbing, building, business or rubbish collection—you can see yourself as sent by Jesus.
You may have friends who would never walk into a church. But they have you as a Christian friend. So tell them the truth about Jesus.
You’ve tasted the living water. You know that it satisfies the soul.
Jesus saves the unlikely. He saves the spiritually clueless, the socially forgotten and the morally broken. And those he saves, he sends into his harvest.
The question is: What are you drinking from—polluted water or living water?
Image by Mohamed Hassan from Pixabay.